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Abstract

One of the actual problems that health workers in Malawi experience now is lack of unified information system which would handle all medical records management in points of care. Instead medical staff has to rely on obsolete paper-based medical records which causes multiple issues with storing, retrieving and aggregating data upon request. Current thesis explores various aspects of implementation of generic individual tracking system using mobile android application “DHIS2 Tracker capture” in neonatal ward settings in hospitals of Malawi to see if and how it tackles the stated problem as well as identify and describe issues that might be discovered in the process. Being qualitative action research, this project has involved two field trips to Malawi for defining the problem, gathering requirements, actual implementation and testing the system. Despite the fact that we only had chance to test a part of desired functionality, according to preliminary results the system has demonstrated greater flexibility under given conditions. Some software issues and bugs were discovered during the project development which have been reported and described in details. Nevertheless, health workers expressed their positive feedback in regards to implemented functionality as well as their interest in further development. This research has included participants from multiple medical facilities in Malawi. Our findings are based mostly on Malawian health workers since they represent main target audience of the system. We have used questionnaires, semi-structured interviews for data collection to get their general feedback for the system. Main initiative for the project was made by the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund in collaboration with Ministry of Health of Malawi and Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) department of University of Oslo.